Biden On Bush-McCain: 'The Sequel Is Always Worse'

Excerpts of the Remarks of Senator Joe Biden

St. Clair Shores, MI - Monday, September 15, 2008



As prepared for delivery

We've seen this movie before, folks. But as everyone knows, the sequel is always worse than the original.

If we forget this history, we're going to be doomed to repeat it -- with four more just like the last eight, or worse.

If you're ready for four more years of George Bush, John McCain is your man. Just as George Herbert Walker Bush was nicknamed "Bush 41" and his son is known as "Bush 43," John McCain could easily become known as "Bush 44."

The campaign a person runs says everything about the way they'll govern. John McCain has decided to bet the house on the politics perfected by Karl Rove.

Those tactics may be good at squeaking by in an election but they are bad if you want to lead one nation, indivisible.

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America needs more than a great solider, America needs a wise leader.

Take a hard look at the positions John has taken for the past 26 years, on the economy, on health care, on foreign policy... and you'll see why I say that John McCain is just four more years of George Bush.

On the issues that you talk about around the kitchen table, Mary's tuition, the cost of the MRI, heating the home this winter -- John McCain is profoundly out of touch.

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John McCain stands with George Bush firmly in the corner of the wealthy and well-connected.

He stands with the oil company CEOs who swore to me, under penalty of perjury, that they didn't need tax breaks to explore for oil.

John McCain is so firmly in their corner he'd hand the Exxon-Mobils of the world another $4 billion dollars a year.

He stands in the corner of the wealthiest Americans by extending tax cuts for people making over a quarter million dollars a year, and then adding more than $300 billion on top of that for corporations and the wealthy.

There is simply no daylight - at least none I can see -- between John McCain and George Bush. On every major challenge we face, from the economy, to health care, to education and Iraq, you can barely tell them apart.

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Whatever happened to the guy, who once denounced tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in a time of war, as "immoral."

Whatever happened to the guy who wanted to do something about climate change. Not anymore. Senator McCain says he'd vote against a bill he helped to write.

When someone running for election changes his views to satisfy the base of the party, that's not change, that's just more of the same Washington game.

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When Senator McCain was subjected to unconscionable, scurrilous attacks in his 2000 campaign, I called him on the phone to ask what I could do.

And now, some of the very same people and the tactics he once deplored his campaign now employs.

The same campaign that once called for a town hall a week is now launching a low blow a day.